


at first sight

by hydrangeamaiden



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Arguing, Awkward Conversations, Awkward Crush, Crush at First Sight, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Hurt, F/F, Girls Kissing, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:02:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22407667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrangeamaiden/pseuds/hydrangeamaiden
Summary: Why in the world had Hornet accepted this duel? There was pride, yes, but she could have always walked away with her current winnings. However, at the thought of one of her siblings going to fight in her stead, she pushed aside her discomfort for their sake. She couldn’t imagine Hollow or, god forbid, little Ghost, in her position right now.
Relationships: God Tamer/Hornet (Hollow Knight), Tiso/Hornet (Hollow Knight)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44





	at first sight

**Author's Note:**

> > 'care, why in god's name is hornet/tiso here' because he sees her once and immediately calls her cute. someone has to write it. someone hhas to ship hornet with everyone and it's gonna be ME  
> > god tamer ended up being way different from how I pictured her, oops. living in the colosseum for her entire life wasn't good for her  
> > 'care why did they just start kissing at the end' BECAUSE I WANTED THEM TO

Hornet drops to one knee, and her eyes fall upon the slain body of a Fool. The dirt beneath her is dry in some patches, wet in the other with blood and other bodily fluids. The earth seems to sizzle with the heat of combat and death, yet hotter still is the air, filled with the jeers of a crowd. When she tries to push herself up, the flat of a heavy blade comes down on her shoulder. Forcing her back to her knees.

She looks up, blinking through the lights, and sees her beloved needle in the hand of her opponent. Cowering a distance away is her injured mount, its eyes bulging with infection and pain.

“It looks like this fight is over,” says the God Tamer, panting softly. Her helmet, pointed at the muzzle, has a dent where Hornet had bashed her forehead against it. Hornet thinks she has a crack in her shell because of it.

Hornet breathes heavily. She had killed every opponent in this trial. Her acrobatics and swift, lethal sting of her needle won the crowd over, but how quickly the tables turned when the champion came out to face her. The conditions for losing had been made very clear. For the sake of her pride, Hornet had fought hard, but she has lost.

“I relent.” Hornet sighs in relief when God Tamer offers her needle, which she uses to push herself up. Her body hurts. In all respects, she is a sprinter, not a long-distance runner. She has been thoroughly beaten.

“Very good.” God Tamer slaps a hand against Hornet’s shoulder. “Good fight! I haven’t been that excited in a long time.”

The spectators seem to feel the same way. They toss handfuls of Geo into the arena with total abandon, not caring if it lands somewhere dirty or hits someone in the head. Coins plink off God Tamer’s helmet, and she catches one to inspect.

“Well then,” she says, “gather this up for me, will you?”

Hornet sighs. It’s going to be a long night.

* * *

Why in the world had Hornet accepted this duel? There was pride, yes, but she could have always walked away with her current winnings. However, at the thought of one of her siblings going to fight in her stead, she pushed aside her discomfort for their sake. She couldn’t imagine Hollow or, god forbid, little Ghost, in her position right now.

It had been easy enough to win a few thousand Geo, but unbeknownst to her, the champion had been watching her perform her trials. She had been bored, apparently, with the same slew of bugs and beasts that came to her like sheep keds to the slaughter. And then along came a spider, to whom the Colosseum must have been child’s play.

So says the God Tamer, who leads Hornet into the filthy catacombs below the arena. The bag of Geo Hornet carries clanks with each step, and those they pass stir from the sound of sorely-needed money.

“You can’t carry this yourself?” Hornet grouses as she steps over a centipede.

“Nope.” God Tamer is carrying her much larger and heavier weapon over her shoulder.

Hornet doesn’t like this bug.

Carrying such a heavy load makes it a struggle just to get up a flight of stairs, much less keep pace with the champion. Twice Hornet has to stop and catch her breath, and by the time they’ve reached God Tamer’s room, her legs feel ready to give out on her. She’s always careful not to exert herself too much, but in an environment like the Colosseum, exhaustion seems to be a given.

Hornet immediately drops the bag, and sets to rubbing her sore arms. God Tamer moves her nail so she can look over her shoulder.

“Hey, what are you doing? Don’t just put it on the floor. There’s a Geo chest over there.” There are actually _multiple_ Geo chests. Each one is identical, but with marks scratched into it: one, five, ten. “I’m gonna go check on my mount. You can sort my winnings in there, and then we can go--”

“Sort it yourself.”

Hornet’s words are as sharp as her needle. She doesn’t make any moves, not to pick up the bag, nor to inspect the storage. God Tamer is silent and unreadable beneath her helm. Any other Fool would do as she says, no questions, but Hornet is from outside the Colosseum and unfettered by its rules. She could have walked right into the arena without paying the fee, she could’ve even gone for the heckling crowd if she wanted to, and she would’ve gotten away with it because of her sheer strength.

God Tamer strides over and grabs her chin, forcing her head up, and Hornet unflinchingly meets the metal face of her detainer.

“Do you understand your position here?” she asks. Hornet nods, and she says, “You remember the conditions of our fight? Yes? I don’t think you do. When I said I wanted you to myself for the night, I wasn’t asking for a sleepover, or for someone to warm the bed.”

“You could have asked any one of the many bugs already here to do your chores for you.” Hornet squeezes her eyes shut when God Tamer digs her thumb against her cheek. “Stop that.”

“No, you listen. You’re in _my_ domain now. You’re tough, I’ll give you that, but you’ve already lost to me. I’m still in charge, here.” She tilts Hornet’s head from side to side, inspecting her cold white shell. “I’ve heard about you from outside the Colosseum, some cryptid from further below who can strike a bug from up to 30 meters away. But up close, you’re not much, are you?”

Hornet keeps her mouth shut. She’s not going to give her the dignity of a response.

“You’re kind of cute, actually.” There comes a low laugh that rattles around inside her helmet. “It was fun watching you perform, but even better knocking you down a peg.”

“You sound like a pervert,” says Hornet. God Tamer abruptly lets go of her jaw, and backs up a step. “Has anyone ever told you ‘no’ in your life?”

What sets Hornet apart from the Fools—even the God Tamer—is that she doesn’t see a loss in battle as a loss of dignity, which is leagues different and more important than pride. And even then, on a grand scale, what is her dignity worth? She hardly thought about it at all in those decades she had spent protecting Hallownest. Then, what is it now that allows Hornet to defy her? Self-respect? Spite?

God Tamer runs a hand down her mask. “Just sort the damn coins.”

She hangs her weapon on a wall mount and storms out of the room, leaving Hornet alone. Without anyone to distract her, Hornet can now inspect this place that this bug calls ‘home’. She could get away with lying down for about a half an hour, at most, and binding her wounds.

If she’s feeling brave, which she is, she could leave right then and there. She could go all the way back up to Dirtmouth and vow to never step foot in the Colosseum again, and even warn her siblings against going there, else someone tries to kidnap them under the guise of a duel.

She feels brave enough to leave, but she doesn’t.

For the time being, she leaves the coin sack next to the chests, and seats herself on the edge of the bed. That there is a bed at all is strange for her, when she’s used to sleeping in padded baskets, nests of silk, or a web made in a pinch. Like the rest of the room, it’s dirty. The sheets are crumpled and stained with dust, blood, and even rust in some places. The shelves are full of armor. The wooden table, with its single chair, has a knife stuck into it. All she has for decoration is a collection of armor and masks on the walls. A few of them resemble the mount she had with her, and she was sure that was the beast’s face.

On the other hand, many innocent creatures had been suited up and thrust into the arena to be slaughtered. Discerning what’s a mask and what’s a face is already difficult in Hallownest, without the intricacies of pointless cruelty against non-sapient bugs.

Hornet takes her sweet time bandaging herself up, and only then does she consider her task. She opens each chest, and sure enough, all of the coins are sorted by value. God Tamer might as well be asking her to count the ash motes in the wind.

To make a point of how impossible this is, Hornet takes her sweet time putting each Geo into its rightful place. No one she knows is _this_ meticulous, yet so slovenly at the same time. She thought that other bugs were confusing before, but then this one goes and throws her for a loop.

When the God Tamer returns, it’s with a bundle of dirty rags that are tossed into an open crate. When she draws closer, Hornet can smell the sour-sweet reek of Infection on her armor. She props herself near where Hornet is ‘working’, watching her move coins one at a time. Like the ticking of a clock, each Geo goes into its rightful place.

“Are you always this slow off the battlefield?”

“Are you and your room always this much of a sty?” Hornet shoots back, without looking up.

“I don’t have time to clean.” The God Tamer, sounding a touch provoked, leans away from the wall. “I have a stable of mounts to tend to and a title to uphold. I’m _busy_. My apologies if I couldn’t provide you a castle, _princess_.”

“Don’t,” she groans, putting her face into her hand. “This was your idea, in the first place. If you’re so busy, why must you distract me?”

She hadn’t noticed before, but the God Tamer has antennae. They’ve been flicking this way and that, and upon inquiry, stand on end like a hatchling’s. “Dinner. I’m surprised you didn’t ditch to go to the mess hall.”

“I’m sure it’s as messy as it sounds.” _Clink, clink, clink,_ go the coins. “Also, you asked me to do this.”

“And now I’m asking you to come with me.” She holds out a hand, which Hornet regards with noticeable disdain. “Come on. You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

She wiggles her fingers, beckoning Hornet, who refuses to move. She doesn’t even bother with the sack of Geo anymore. Must she be patronized in this way? Lose one fight, and suddenly you’re weak, weak, _weak_. But, then again, her only opponents for ages were mindless bugs and untrained brigands.

It’s hard not to feel down on herself, though, when a bug is literally leaning down to talk to her. Hornet gets to her feet, making a point to keep her hands to herself. Standing at full height, back perfectly straight, she is still an entire head shorter than the God Tamer. She hadn’t noticed while they were fighting, and the beast she was with made everyone else look smaller, anyway.

“Alright, lil’ spider, this way,” the God Tamer says, still beckoning her. They walk back the way they came, and without anything burdening her, Hornet can get a good look at the underbelly of the Colosseum. To say it looks like a dungeon would be polite. Just as the entrance is the mouth of some long-dead beast, the inside is its hollowed-out stomach, fitted with stone floors and barrel-vaulted ceilings haphazardly hung with chains and lanterns. The crumbling husks of bugs swinging from the ceiling shower those below with dust.

All around, bugs are crowded into wall niches, stumbling up and down the catacombs, or sleeping. Not everyone is lucky enough to have their own room, judging by the number of Fools sleeping on floor mats. In the dining hall, warm with stove heat, even more have set up camp. Hornet has no compassion for them, but she is appalled by the total lack of management and clear overpopulation. Morbid as it sounds, the creatures in the wilds of Deepnest were enough to keep the Weavers’ population from getting out of control. There was a food web. The arena functions as a ‘predator’ here, but it is apparently not enough to stop new bugs from pouring in, drawn by the promise of cash and glory.

Hornet is jostled around by the other bugs, who are vying for food and a spot at one of the long bench tables. She’s prodded by elbows, jabbed by sharp shoulder armor, and kicked in the shins before God Tamer loops an arm around her shoulders and brings her in close.

“Be careful. You’ll get eaten alive in here if you’re not careful,” the God Tamer says, and whether she’s being figurative or literal is unclear. Hornet is displeased at being manhandled, but the crowd is louder than her grumbling, and where else could she go? Ironically, the God Tamer has gone from being a deadly foe in the arena to the safest person in the room. The feeling of her arm, snug around her shoulders, makes Hornet think of long-lost, wistful daydreams of strolling through the City of Tears with a nameless, faceless bug. Her face burns from the heat of the room and the reminder of how touch-starved she is. It’s completely irrational to think of that, with this bug, in this particular moment. Her mind has the worst timing sometimes.

“I’d like two bowls of—for Wyrm’s sake—I SAID--” God Tamer waves her free arm over the crowd, yelling over the rest of the bugs. Hornet puts her hands over her head to block out the increasingly unbearable noise.

It doesn’t get much better when they’re seated, with trays laden in dubious-looking food and drink. Hornet spends more time picking out the obviously infected parts than actually eating, despite the growl of her empty stomach. God Tamer eats indiscriminately, but with better manners than the bugs who clearly aren’t getting enough to eat.

“Normally us in the higher ranks get catering,” God Tamer explains, lowering her spoon, “but there was an outbreak, and we lost a lot of the staff. You know how it is with food-borne illnesses.”

“You’re going to get sick,” Hornet points out. If God Tamer had taken off her whole helmet instead of just the jaw, she’d be able to tell if her eyes were orange yet—the easiest way to spot the Infection. If that’s the case, then that would explain a lot.

“I’ll fight it off. I’m not guaranteed a meal anywhere else.” And with that, God Tamer returns to her meal. Hornet sighs, finally relents to her own hunger, and tucks in. It’s not the worst meal she has eaten, but she can certainly think of how to improve it. The meat is a little too greasy for her tastes, and the vegetables are under-cooked. They bread can hardly be called such: it is so stale that even Hornet can’t bite into it. She notices that others have improvised by soaking it in the grease to soften it up. She shakes her head, and hands the roll off to someone who looks even hungrier than she does.

Said bug notices the God Tamer sitting beside her, and gapes. The tip of his hood wiggles, hinting at antennae hidden beneath. “Hey! You! Where were you all day?” he cries, indignant.

“Oh, Tiso, when did you get here?” God Tamer asks.

“I just got here.” The bug, Tiso, flashes her a glare. “Why’d you ditch at last minute?”

“I told you, I had something important to attend to.”

“Oh?” Tiso folds his arms on the table. Like everyone else here, he’s in tarnished armor, but he made the strange decision of carrying a shield with him. That strikes Hornet as strange: it seems to be an unspoken rule here that everyone eats unarmed. Well, from her perspective, it’s technically not a weapon.

“That bug I told you about? Remember?” God Tamer tilts her head towards Hornet, who has gone back to her food. She has shredded it in search of edible parts. “She’s with me tonight.”

“So the reason you ditched training—and, may I remind you, that warrior everyone’s been talking about is coming soon—which is _very important_ , which you _promised me_ you’d show up for,” Tiso says, drawing a deep, angry breath, “was to hang out with a cute girl?”

“Yep.” God Tamer saws at a particularly tough piece of meat.

“’Cute’?” Hornet repeats. Her fork stops halfway to her mouth. God Tamer begins to snicker at Tiso, whose face is now as red as a radish.

“Don’t you laugh at me!” Tiso smacks his hands against the table, rattling a few trays and the nerves of the bugs on either side of him. “I’m the one who’s going to be laughing, when I defeat you in tomorrow’s tournament! While you’re gallivanting around with her, I’m going to be training myself to peak form!”

“For Wyrm’s sake, I just want to take a break!” God Tamer cries, still laughing. She throws her hands in the air for added effect. “Right, Hornet?”

They’re both staring at her now, and her face goes warm. It’s even more evident on her pale shell, which makes her embarrassment worse. “Yes. Why else would you have me sort your winnings for you?”

“Oh! So you’re just using her to get your chores done?” Tiso jabs an accusing finger at the God Tamer. “You’re just being lazy!”

“No! I took care of the mounts myself!”

“But you’re going to make her do more, aren’t you?”

“Well--” God Tamer’s antennae prick upwards. It’s such a contrast from how collected she was when they were alone. However, in a blink, she’s straightened up and composed. She leans forward, and he leans away. “So what? Are you jealous that it’s not you? Or…could it be that you’ve got your eye on her?”

Tiso sputters. The tip of his hood springs up. A bug next to him, having caught wind of the conversation, laughs and nudges his shoulder.

“Don’t put words into my mouth,” Tiso shoots back.

“Then don’t put words in mind. You don’t know the situation.” God Tamer settles back down, and Hornet feels that she must say something. This argument has started because of her, and neither of them have bothered to ask for her opinion.

“The situation is that the God Tamer defeated me in a duel, and my being with her ‘til next morning was simply what she wanted if she won,” Hornet explains, rather dryly at that.

“If you wanted to hang out with someone--!” Tiso is interrupted by God Tamer putting a hand over his mouth. He screams muffled protests, before finally just licking her hand. She makes a disgusted sound and drags her wet hand across his hood, but even then, he’s still cackling. Hornet shakes her head, finding this all rather immature. From her point of view, the God Tamer is so incompetent that she couldn’t ask Hornet to spend time with her without fighting and humiliating her first.

She does not mask her contempt for the two, and her glare is enough to chill the atmosphere. Tiso’s laughter whitens and fades out into a nervous squeak. Everyone who had been eavesdropping turns away politely, while the God Tamer finishes off the rest of her meal.

“I’m done.” Hornet pushes her tray away, and gets up from the table. She’s not even out of the mess hall when God Tamer catches up with her. Hornet picks up the pace, taking long strides down the hall and up the stairs, until the other girl is practically jogging to keep up.

“Leave me alone,” Hornet growls. Her shoulders are hunched, arms tense at her side beneath her cloak.

“It’s not safe, being alone in a place like this,” God Tamer protests.

“Then you shouldn’t have brought me here.” At the bottom of the last stairwell, Hornet wheels around and flares her cloak. “Why am I here? Were your Colosseum friends not good enough company? Am I just here for your amusement? Why— _why_ am I here?”

She presses her fingertips to her temple, while God Tamer stands rigid and silent before her. She feels something in her reach a boiling point, and everything just comes spilling out. “If you don’t even know how to treat a girl, then maybe you shouldn’t be spending time with one! Earning my company by challenging me to a duel? You’re a blithering idiot! I haven’t had a single friend in my life, and even I know that’s not how it’s supposed to work!”

The God Tamer laces and unlaces her fingers together. Her once proud stance has faltered, and her head is lowered like a child being scolded. She might as well be; Hornet has likely been around much longer than her, seen too much and done too much to have to put up with another bug’s ridiculousness. A fire roils in Hornet’s gut, but rather than the flames of words, puffs of smoke come out. Her anger has reached the point where she can’t even speak, so she does what comes easiest to her: she storms off.

“You shouldn’t--” the God Tamer starts, but balks when Hornet shoots her a needle-sharp look. She lowers her hand and watches that red cloak of hers flare around a corner, and disappear.

Hornet, though furious, is a bug of her word. She had agreed to spending the night in the Colosseum, so here she will stay until morning. It wasn’t specified, however, that she had to sleep in God Tamer’s room. She stalks away down the twisting halls until she sees holes in the walls that give way to the rest of Kingdom’s Edge. The belly of the beast goes further than she had imagined; she does not see so much as a rock that she recognizes out there. Ash from the Wyrm corpse and cold sand, maybe snow, comes in from the ‘windows’ and draws white lines on the floor. From here, it’s hard to say where Kingdom’s Edge ends and where the Wastelands begin.

It is exactly this ‘edge of the world’ place that she needs to be alone in. She finds a spot on the ceiling, out of the way of the wind, and weaves her web. It’s a poorly constructed one, on account of her shaking hands, but she manages that and some sloppy embroidery around the center to protect her from the eyes of anyone passing beneath. Her body composition means that warming things up with her body heat is nigh impossible, but she’s used to the cold.

The exhaustion of battle and a night wasted catch up to her, and she falls into a drowsy state. A lot swirls through her mind during those half-awake moments. She thinks about what she needs to do at home, her siblings who are waiting for her. God Tamer’s arm around her, a stranger calling her ‘cute’, both things she has never experienced. She folds her arms over her chest, cheeks burning at these strange, unknown affections from bugs who have no right giving a damn about her. The God Tamer, especially, who had gone as far as to fight against her, for her.

She slides out of consciousness at some point, awakening to the murmur of unfamiliar voices. Something sharp pokes her back through the web, startling her awake. The web sags when she rolls onto her side. Through layered threads, she sees a group of armored bugs, three of them, carrying nails. One of them has a lantern, throwing their ghastly shadows across the floor. And they’re poking at her web.

Hornet reaches for her weapon, and a deathly chill runs through her when her hand meets empty air. Her needle! Where is it? When had she set it down? One of the bugs mumbles to another, and cuts a slice through which her leg falls through. They’re prodding at her now. Saying something about spiders. Without the familiar weight against her back, she feels upended. Unbalanced. Hornet’s leg gets caught in stray webbing, and trying to tug it free ends up with her curled awkwardly forward. Her head pounds as she feels the supports of her nest start to give.

“Stop it.” Her voice is hoarse at first, but grows louder with her desperation. Her sleep-addled mind has not fully grasped what’s happening. “Stop it! Leave me be!”

A hand catches her ankle. She feels each individual finger, grasping at her, trying to pull her out. She hears sounds of excitement from the others. It’s likely that they’ve never seen a spider before. Unarmed and trapped in her own web, on the verge of capture, Hornet feels a surge of helplessness that turns her stomach. The only thing she can do is scream, and she does so with such force that the nest rocks. Her scream carries down the hall as a gust of wind and a long howl, reminiscent of her siblings’ shrieks.

Still the bug continues to pull at her, with the others whispering at them to hurry up. The web begins to give beneath her, but when she comes down, she does so kicking and snarling. She smacks the back of her head when she falls, but that does not deter her from springing up and at the bug who had grabbed her. She digs her claws into their arm, and now they are the one squirming and struggling. They let out a pained howl when her chelicerae break through their arm, which they’ve foolishly left unprotected. The second bug tries to restrain her, while the third flees in terror.

“Let me go!” Hornet’s scream comes out high-pitched and almost fearful as she thrashes in her captor’s arms. Unfortunately for these Fools, her strength was enough to give even the Champion a hard time. Her elbow catches their helmet, and they go staggering back—and right into the point of a nail.

She hadn’t heard the God Tamer coming up the stairs, accosting the fleeing bug and demanding to know what that racket was. Nor had she seen Tiso and several other warriors clambering out of their chambers, awoken by unfamiliar screams. Many have gathered out of curiosity and, yes, even concern, and Hornet had been too distracted to notice a single one coming. She backs away, hissing, ready to leave every last one of them like the bug she had first bitten: on the ground, bleeding, crying in pain.

The God Tamer’s voice rises above the din; she grabs the remaining bug by the front of their armor and snarls, “What the fuck do you think you’re--?”

Hornet puts her hands to the side of her head, blocking out the sound and cowering away. Too many people. Too many voices. Too much at once. Her head spins. Someone comes over and asks if she’s already. An arm reaches for her. She slaps it away.

“Hornet.” It’s a familiar, husky voice, laden with exhaustion and worry. The God Tamer puts her hands on Hornet’s shoulders. “Did they hurt you? Are you alright?”

She keeps her hands in place, even as Hornet drives a punch into her chest and tries to kick her away. Someone is pulling the tattered, sorry web from the ceiling. Too many someones, not enough people she’s actually familiar with.

“There’s nothing to see here. Move along,” the God Tamer snaps at a group who has gotten too close. Hornet turns, ready to run, but is caught in her strong and sturdy arms. When she speaks to her, it is in a much gentler voice. “No, honey. No. It’s alright. Come here.”

God Tamer sweeps her into a princess carry, hugging her close and shielding her from prying eyes. Her mount lumbers through the crowd with a low rumble, escorting the two down the hall and away. Tiso, among the witnesses, jogs after them and exchanges a few words with God Tamer.

The voices fade out after that. Hornet, the entire time, has had her eyes screwed shut and keeps it that way for a good while. A door shuts behind her, and she no longer hears the echos of footsteps.

The sheets she is laid upon are clean, a bit musty at worst. She opens her eyes, and God Tamer’s face swims into view. Not her helmet. The visor has been lifted to reveal two white eyes, flecked with orange, and a long scar cutting through the right side of her face. Her brow is creased with worry. In the background, she sees something that gives her great relief: her needle, hung neatly with God Tamer’s other weapons, waiting for her.

“So you do have a face,” Hornet croaks. God Tamer laughs whitely.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you here.” She gently turns Hornet’s head to the side to check her shell for cracks. “When I first saw you, out there in the arena, all I could think of was...I don’t know. It’s been so long since I’ve seen someone on equal footing with me. Everyone’s either afraid of me or, I don’t know, I don’t know. You don’t deserve this.”

God Tamer leans away to cough into her arm. Hornet’s heart sinks: she’s infected. She’s one of the remnants. But she can’t bring herself to interrupt.

“You’re right: I don’t know anything about this stuff. In this place, you just take what you want. I never stopped to think that was wrong.”

She swipes something from beneath Hornet’s eye: a tear, she realizes, when she feels something trickle down her shell. Her eyes feel heavy.

“Earlier,” Hornet says thickly, “What did you call me?”

“Um.” God Tamer’s face flushes. The light in her eyes gets a little brighter. “Nothing...nothing.”

She lingers above Hornet for a moment, both of them gazing into each other’s eyes. Hornet finds that her anger has mostly melted away, though there is a lingering distrust even as the God Tamer gently brushes her fingers across her jawline. God Tamer is infected. She shouldn’t be laying with her like this, she needs to find her a doctor. Though they’d only be able to monitor her, and wait for her to sweat it out.

The God Tamer props her elbows on either side of Hornet. Her breath is warm against her face, and Hornet briefly wonders if the Infection is transmittable by saliva. Yet when God Tamer kisses her, it’s as if she’s not even sick. It’s a pleasant kind of warmth she didn’t know she was craving so badly. She lays a hand gingerly on God Tamer’s side, shivering and tingling with each kiss and soft touch. God Tamer, who she thought was just some brute, caresses and kisses her as if she were glass.

She takes one of Hornet’s hands in hers, and presses a kiss to each knuckle, then the back, then her palm. She presses another kiss to Hornet’s mouth, slow and sweet, yet with a hint of desperation. Hornet, overcome by this, whimpers quietly.

God Tamer pulls away, and presses their foreheads together. She exhales, quietly, and asks: “Do you want me to take you home?”

And Hornet gives God Tamer’s hand a squeeze, feeling bleary-eyed and in bliss.

“In a minute, yes.”


End file.
